Mrs Bertram had been having hysterics on and off ever since she got up. Mrs Bertram was ‘highly strung’. (Other people sometimes found a less flattering name for it.) Mrs Bertram often hinted to her friends that the very fact of her likeness to Queen Elizabeth was a strain on the nervous system which less heroic natures would have found unendurable. Everything seemed to have gone wrong with her since she began to dress for the pageant. Her dress was wrong, for one thing. She was sure that it was fuller than it ought to be. It took six or seven people to calm her about her dress. Then her hair was wrong. It wouldn’t go right. The hairdresser came to do it and she tore it down again and had another fit of hysterics. The six or seven people managed with great difficulty to calm her again and get her hair up though she said that there was a fate against her and that she was going to sue the hairdresser for damages and that she’d never looked so hideous before in her life. The Vicar’s wife with the kindest intention and merely in order to calm her, assured her that she had, and this brought on yet another attack. Then, fearing that the six or seven comforters were going to desert her, she said that her shoes were wrong. She said that they were the wrong shape and that they were too big. When her six or seven comforters had proved that they were not too big she had another fit of hysterics and said they were too small. The whole cast was needed to calm her over the shoes and she said finally that she supposed she’d have to wear them and that she hoped she’d never again be called upon to suffer as she’d suffered that day and that people who weren’t highly strung had no idea how terribly she suffered and that she got no sympathy and she knew she looked a sight and that if this was how she was going to be treated she’d never be in another pageant as long as she lived. Then she suddenly began to suffer about her page. She’d told him to be here an hour before time and he wasn’t and she wouldn’t act without a page. She didn’t care what anyone said. She wouldn’t act without a page. It was an insult to expect her to. Her comforters assured her that Bertie would be in time. Bertie had never been known to be late for anything. Then she began to suffer about Bertie’s stockings. She’d said particularly to his mother that he must have good white silk stockings to go with his white satin suit and shoes and she was sure that he’d have common ones. If he came in common white silk stockings she wouldn’t act in the pageant. She wouldn’t act with a page with common white silk stockings. It would be an insult to expect her to. . . .
It was just a quarter past two and he hadn’t come and she’d told him to be there by half-past one, and if he didn’t come she wouldn’t be in the pageant at all. She wouldn’t stir a foot, and she’d sue them all for damages. She sat down on a chair with her back to the door and had another fit of hysterics. The whole cast had gathered round her. They were looking rather anxious. It was time to start on the procession and her page had not turned up and they saw that nothing on earth would persuade Gloriana to set off without him. She was still suffering terribly.
‘I – I’ll just send up to his uncle’s, shall I?’ Sir Walter Raleigh was suggesting when the door opened and Bertie stood upon the threshold dressed in the full panoply of a Red Indian. He smiled very sweetly at them all.
‘I’m so sorry I’m so late,’ he said. ‘Am I all right?’
‘Is that you, child?’ said the Virgin Queen in a hoarse, suffering voice without turning her head.
‘Yes,’ said Bertie. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late.’
The others were watching him, paralysed with horror.
‘Have you got on common silk stockings?’ said Elizabeth wearily, still without turning her head. ‘I’m worn out body and soul by all this worry and anxiety and responsibility . . . have you got on common silk stockings, boy?’
Bertie looked down at his khaki frilled trousers.
‘No,’ he said brightly. ‘No, I haven’t got on common silk stockings at all.’
Elizabeth was evidently still too worn out in body and soul to turn her head. She appealed to the others.
‘Has he got on common silk stockings?’ she asked.
She was met by silence. The others were still gazing at Bertie in paralysed horror.
Slowly Mrs Bertram turned round. She saw Bertie dressed as a Red Indian. Her face changed to a mask of fury. She uttered a piercing scream.
‘You wretch!’ she said, ‘you hateful, hateful boy!’
Then with a spirit worthy of the Virgin Queen herself she flung herself upon the unfortunate Bertie and boxed his ears. . . .
The cast of the pageant was in despair. Bertie, battered and bewildered, had fled howling homewards and Mrs Bertram was suffering more terribly even than she had suffered before. She was engaged in gliding from one fit of hysterics into another. In the intervals she informed them that nothing would induce her to take part in the pageant without a page and that it was an insult to ask her to and that they couldn’t get a page now and that she’d sue the boy’s mother for damages and that she’d sue them all for damages and that she’d never get over this as long as she lived. They stood around her offering sal volatile and smelling salts and eau de Cologne and sympathy and consolation. They coaxed and soothed and pleaded all to no avail. Mrs Bertram continued to suffer. A mild and well-meaning suggestion from Sir Walter Raleigh that she should lend her clothes to someone else who didn’t mind going without a page threw her into such a state that Sir Walter Raleigh crept into the next room so that the sight of him might not continue to increase her sufferings.
‘All right,’ he remarked despondently to the Vicar’s favourite aspidistra, ‘she can sue me for damages and write to the papers about me’ (these had been two of her milder threats). ‘I don’t care.’
Then when the chaos and despair and suffering were at their height there came a loud knock at the door. The Vicar’s wife went to open it. In the doorway stood a boy with a bullet head, fair bristly hair and very plain features. It was Ginger. His expression was a good imitation of William’s most expressionless one.
‘I DON’T LIKE HIS FACE,’ MRS BERTRAM PRONOUNCED FINALLY, ‘BUT THE SUIT’S ALL RIGHT. LET HIM COME.’
WILLIAM HID HIS ELATION BENEATH HIS IMPASSIVE STARE.
‘Please do you want a page?’ he said stolidly, ‘’cause I know a boy what’s got a page’s suit what wun’t mind comin’ an’ bein’ a page for you.’
There was a moment’s tense silence, then someone said eagerly:
‘Where is he? Would it take long to fetch him? Could he put it on quickly?’
‘He’s here,’ said Ginger, ‘an’ he’s got it on.’
He put both his fingers into his mouth and emitted an ear-splitting whistle.
Another boy, wearing a white satin suit, emerged from the shadow of the doorway, and entered the room. It was William. He wore his imbecile expression as a protection against awkward questions. They gazed at him open-mouthed. Mrs Bertram abruptly ceased suffering. In the background the Vicar’s wife was heard to groan: ‘It’s that boy . . . it’s that awful William Brown.’
But there was no time for asking questions. Already the procession would be late. Mrs Bertram cast one piercing glance at him from head to foot. The others watched her breathlessly. His stockings were of quite good silk and his suit was perfect.
‘I don’t like his face,’ she pronounced finally, ‘but the suit’s all right. Let him come.’
The route of the procession of the pageant was thickly lined. Near the school was a massed crowd of boys among which stood Bertie looking bewildered and infuriated. Next to him stood Ginger who was explaining the situation to him patiently for the twentieth time.
‘You see, Bertie, you’re such a good hypnotist . . . you hypnotised him so that he didn’t know what he was doin’. You told him to go round with that case an’ do somethin’ to show himself that he’d been round . . . well, you’d hypnotised him so well that he did two things ’stead of only one. He got the ball an’ he changed the things in the case. He ran upstairs an’ changed them for somethin’ of his own . . . while he was hypnotised a
n’ din’t know what he was doin’. He was only doin’ somethin’ to show that he’d taken it round same as you said, but he din’ know what he was doin’ ’cause he was hypnotised. Well, when he came to himself an’ found that white satin suit where his Red Indian things used to be (Douglas’s fetchin’ that Red Indian suit back from your house now) he din’t know what to do. He din’t know where it’d come from ’cause he’d been hypnotised when he put it there an’ when he heard the pageant wanted a page he thought he’d try ’n help them by puttin’ on the white satin suit that he didn’t know where it had come from ’cause of bein’ hypnotised an’ go over jus’ to see if he could help them ’cause he’d heard that they wanted a page an’ he din’t know where the white suit had come from ’cause of bein’ hypnotised when he put it there . . .’
But a sudden hush fell. The procession was approaching. The central figure of the procession was Mrs Bertram as Queen Elizabeth. Behind her walked William as the page. Behind William walked his dog Jumble – as unpolished-looking a dog as was William a boy. Jumble had joined the procession as it passed William’s gate and had firmly resisted all attempts at ejection. William’s appearance had been the subject of many unfavourable comments as he passed along the route behind Mrs Bertram.
‘Most unsuitable . . .’ had been the kindest.
‘To think of choosing that boy when they must have had the choice of all the boys in the village.’
‘I’d heard that they were going to have Bertie. . . . I must say I think they’d have been wiser to have a boy of that type.’
‘There’s nothing in the least – romantic or mediaeval about his face.’
‘When I think of him chasing my cat yesterday . . .’
‘He’s so plain.’
‘And that awful dog.’
But when he reached the place where the school was massed a mighty roar of applause burst forth. The air rang with cheers and with ‘Good ole Williams’.
William was not quite proof against it. The expressionlessness of his expression flickered and broke up for just a second. He grinned and blushed like any jeune première.
Then, hastily composing his features again to imbecility, he passed on. . . .
Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.
‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’
Sunday Times on the Just William series
‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first appeared’
Guardian
Books available in the Just William series
Just William
More William
William Again
William the Fourth
Still William
William the Conqueror
William the Outlaw
William in Trouble
William the Good
William at War
William
First published 1927
This selection first published 1984 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-447-20613-2 EPUB
All stories copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee
This selection copyright © 1984 Richmal C. Ashbee
Foreword copyright © Francesca Simon 2011
Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate
The right of Richmal C. Ashbee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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